A FRESHLY-HATCHED baby bedbug was cozy beside its mother between the laces of a mat as they sucked the blood of the owners of the house who were fast asleep. When the sun was up, in order to kill the stubborn bedbugs, the humans took the mat and spread it outside. As the heat of the sun intensified, the baby bedbug became uncomfortable and cried out to its mother: “Mother, the heat is getting too much. We may soon die”. The mother replied: “My baby, bear it.
Whatever is hot will surely cool down. No condition is permanent”.
You must have seen this legend plastered on the boards of lorries (Gwongworo in Igbo, Bolekaja in Yoruba, fill in the gap in your language), commercial buses, tricycles, commercial motorcycles and even wheel barrows.
This legend is true, not just for bedbugs, but also (more importantly) for us human beings, especially politicians. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, the foremost fighter for Nigeria’s independence, was quoted as reminding his townsman, Dr. Ukpabi Asika (the civilian Administrator of the defunct East Central State): “No condition is permanent”, when Asika got fresh and tried to prove to the Great Zik of Africa that his time was past and he (Asika) was now on the centre stage, just after civil war.
I went into this allegory to depict the changing scenario in the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, where the hunter has increasingly become the hunted, and the stone that the builder refused has now become, though not yet the head cornerstone, but a hot cake.
Remember the drama that starred the newly-elected President Muhammadu Buhari; the then touted “National Leader” of the APC, Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu and the man who grabbed the Presidency of the Senate through rebellion, Dr. Bukola Saraki, at the outset of this regime, precisely on the 9th of June, 2015.
Let me refresh our memories, for those who may have forgotten the details. Buhari Before President Buhari was sworn in, it was time for the stakeholders in the merger that spawned the APC – the All Nigerian People’s Party, ANPP, the Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, the Action Congress of Nigeria,ACN, the so-called “new” Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and the Rochas Okorocha group – to struggle for the spoils of victory over the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.
After Buhari assumed power, it was time to share the National Assembly posts. Since Buhari of the CPC had taken up the Presidency and ceded the Vice Presidency to Yemi Osinbajo, who was nominated by Tinubu, the leader of the ACN group, it was expected that the NASS leadership would be primarily set aside for the ANPP and nPDP for equity. Buhari had openly and wisely committed himself to non-interference in the process of emergence of the leadership of the Federal legislature.
He gave some of us reason to believe that he would toe the noble footsteps of his predecessors, the late President Umaru Musa Yar’ Adua and Goodluck Jonathan, by allowing the leadership of legislative arm of government a free hand to emerge and operate. But that was not to be.
The “National Leader” of the APC, Bola Tinubu, had other ideas. Tinubu, the chief architect of the successful merger, had a dream that the Federal Government that would emerge from the effort would be a two-way partnership between him and Buhari, whereby Buhari would run the government in full consultation with him, while he would run the party in full consultation with Buhari.
The rest of the stakeholders would have to take what they got or leave it, or so it seemed. That was a recipe for disaster, but Tinubu felt he could power it through. Strangely, Buhari went along with the plan. The duo launched a series of vicious attacks on Saraki and his Deputy, Ike Ekweremadu of the PDP. Saraki and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, had to run to the PDP to win against Buhari/Tinubu’s candidates.
Realising they could not remove Saraki and Ekweremadu as well as Dogara from within the parliament, they forced Dogara to make expensive concessions, but nothing Saraki could do would suffice except his removal. Thus was born his prosecution at the Code of Conduct Tribunal and the investigations over alleged forgery of Senate rules involving him and Ekweremadu. Meanwhile, Buhari sought to assert his rightful place as the Leader of the APC, which would undercut Tinubu’s partnership idea and his place as the touted National Leader of the Party.
In fact, Buhari wanted to convert the APC to his defunct CPC by pushing aside Tinubu using the renegades in his camp while creating fresh alliances. When Tinubu noticed this, he became withdrawn from the activities of the Party.
Speculations became rife that he was looking at an alternative to APC, which he has denied. Buhari’s ability to lead the APC to win the Ondo State election without Tinubu illustrates a new boldness in forging ahead as the sole Leader of the party. He has now turned to Saraki to make up in case Tinubu makes good what is being speculated.
To illustrate this, Saraki’s main man, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, was recently chosen over Mr. Joe Igbokwe of the Tinubu camp as the National Publicity Secretary of the APC, a post that fell vacant after Tinubu’s man, Lai Mohammed, was appointed Minister of Information. It was a wise decision because Joe Igbokwe is seen as an “attack dog” type of party spokesman compared with Bolaji, who is more likely to bring calm professionalism as the spokesman of a ruling party.
Besides, Igbokwe has managed to alienate many of his kinsmen, the Igbo people, and could not be a good marketer of the party in that section of the populace. Saraki, a shrewd politician, simply hunkered down while the siege on him lasted, knowing that in politics, what is hot today will be cool tomorrow.
It is a lesson for everybody, especially politicians: No condition is permanent.
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